SHIVERS Page #4

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SUPER:

(pause)

Who? No, that's not me. You got the

wrong guy. Just a sec.

(looks up at St. Luc

and holds out the

phone to him)

It's for you. Somebody wants to know

how come you didn't show up for lunch.

The detective looks suspiciously at St. Luc, who simply looks

dazed.

INT. ROLLO LINSKY'S LABORATORY -- AFTERNOON

Next to a shallow porcelain tray full of immense and grotesque

marine worm specimens lies a large parcel wrapped in brown

paper. Rollo's plump fingers eagerly open the package to

reveal a large variety of delicatessen sandwiches and

accessories.

Rollo offers some to St. Luc while stuffing one in his own

mouth. There are Cokes and old coffees everywhere, plus

mustard, relish, and ketchup dispensers of all kinds. Rollo

and St. Luc sit around Rollo's desk, a very sleek metal

affair.

Rollo's lab itself is a combination of modern office and

biology room in a museum of natural history. Specimens of

all kinds, in bottles and cases, mounted on glass and wood,

floating in preservative baths, are everywhere. There are

also a few cages of living insects, moldy aquaria and lab

cultures in various stages of neglect.

There are also clippings from magazines and newspapers

sporting furious underlinings and circlings in red ink which

are stuck to walls, doors, bookshelves.

Despite the potential for chaos, however, there is an

underlying order which reflects Rollo's own real discipline,

which is not always immediately apparent. And the microscopes

and glass slides, the stainless-steel gynecological table

complete with stirrups, metal drug and instrument cabinet,

etc., are spotless and in good shape.

Rollo is rotund, soft-faced, and a manic-depressive. In his

manic phase he is a joker and an elbow-nudger, and his general

style, even when discussing medical matters in medical jargon,

is broad North-American Jewish. In his depressive phase, he

becomes a sullen kid who has an oddly sinister aspect to his

character.

Rollo detaches himself from his baby beef in order to comment

on the food that, not so secretly, he loves best of all.

ROLLO:

Not exactly the kind of lunch Hobbes

would have laid on you, Rog, but

it's all I got, and...

(places hand on heart,

leans over

confidentially)

...all I got I share with you. Go

ahead. Take all you want.

ST. LUC

You touch my spleen, Rollo.

(they giggle at an

old medical-school

reference)

And here all the time I was thinking --

if I ever bothered to think about

the good old days -- well, at least

there's Rollo. He's in VD and he's

happy.

ROLLO:

I'm still a VD man under the skin,

Rog. You know me. I'm a down-to-earth

kinda guy, right?

ST. LUC

Well, at least you still talk the

same.

ROLLO:

So who changes?

ST. LUC

But you gave up your private practice.

Suddenly you're into pure research

and you... you're what, a

parasitologist?

ROLLO:

That was my father's idea... private

practice. He wanted to set me up --

I couldn't say no. But he's dead

now. And me, I'm still a snoop, I

gotta do research. Look at that

beautiful stuff...

(gestures everywhere)

...lookit it!

He jams a final piece of sandwich into his mouth and jumps

to his feet, smiling broadly.

ROLLO:

(with great enthusiasm,

indicating the entire

lab)

This is the 'Satyr's Tongue'!

He pulls a book off a shelf with a bookmark in it. He opens

the book at the marked page and hands it to St. Luc. As St.

Luc looks at the picture of a satyr with his tongue hanging

out and reads the brief note on how medieval alchemists

thought the ground-up tongue of the satyr could cure any

disease, Rollo continues to talk.

ROLLO:

The note includes a warning against

swallowing the tongue whole, but we

don't see the rest of this caution.

'Satyr's Tongue' was Hobbes's code

name for our project. What we were

trying to do was to find an

alternative to organ transplants.

As Rollo speaks, he walks all over the place, picking up and

discarding various charts, specimens, bottled and diseased

human organs, etc.

As he moves around, we catch glimpses of Letrasetted signs

that Rollo has tacked up: 'Sex is the invention of a clever

venereal disease -- Hobbes'; 'Dr. Hobbes's prescription:

starve a fever, feed an obsession'; 'The road of excess leads

to knowledge'; plus several pictures of satyrs with their

tongues sticking out, being cut off by alchemists, etc.

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